Sateliot announced a partnership with power grid solution company Sentrisense to support smart power line infrastructure using Sateliot's soon-to-launch satellite array.

Sentrisense provides monitoring and amperage modification systems to help electric towers and power lines run more efficiently. The company touts the devices are able to reduce the average reaction time for pinpointing damaged or faulted wire locations from four hours to five minutes. Sentrisense CEO Sebastián Cerone told SDxCentral that customers have validated the technology’s ability to detect a fallen power line more than a kilometer away from the sensor.

Sentrisense has sensors deployed in the U.S., Australia, Belgium, Chile, Spain, and Sweden. The deal with Sateliot will connect those sensors to Sateliot's NB-IoT constellation for data retrieval, even when they are out of reach from terrestrial connection points. Sateliot's first nanosatellite is scheduled to launch early next month.

“Infrastructure monitoring is one of the cases that requires connectivity in remote areas [and] Sateliot's solution is ideal in these cases," Sateliot CEO Jaume Sanpera told SDxCentral. "One solution – 5G IoT – works everywhere. In cities or in mobile connection, it keeps connected to terrestrial networks. In remote places it connects seamlessly to our satellite constellation.”

Sateliot last year struck a deal with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to build a virtualized 5G core. It has since focused on broadening its network applications to provide coverage for any 3GPP Release-17 standard-compliant IoT device. It's pricing model starts at $1 per month for every connected IoT device.

Late last year, Sateliot synced with Streamline – a South African company offering livestock tracking management services – with a goal to connect 400,000 5G IoT devices on remote livestock farms across the world by the end of 2023. And last month, the company partnered with IoT provider Sensefinity to help prevent cargo damage.

Satelliot plans to have five satellites in orbit by the end of this year, when it plans to begin commercial operations. It then plans to have 16 total satellites in orbit by early 2024, 64 total satellites by the end of 2024, and a “full constellation” of 256 satellites by 2025,  a bullish roadmap model echoed by other small-satellite initiatives.

Sanpera claims the company has signed agreements with telecommunication operators and mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) in more than 50 countries, but the only publicly announced partnership is with Telefónica. He added that the company is signing agreements with global non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to offer free-of-charge connectivity related to environmental and social projects. “Such a revolution can not only be business driven,” he told SDxCentral in an earlier interview.